Hiya.

Well, I went ahead and broke down and got it...with the extra editors, of course. All totaled, it was $167 ($195 canadian) for RealmCrafter (with free update to v2.0 when it's released), MegaTerrains, SkinEditor, and CaveMaker.

So far I've only installed them and opened them once. Poking around I can see it's fairly straight foward; things are mainly labled as you would expect, and most of it is 'common language' for setting stuff up. It seems very modular in design, with the main RC window giving you access to all your exta goodies (be they add-on programs like CaveMaker, or even 'props' and 'model packs'). That's kinda nice. The biggest things I'm gonna have to get used to are work-flow related. In RC, it seems that the 'left/right' button usages are backwards. Left clicking brings up 'uses' of whatever tool you're using, and right clicking is for selecting/moving stuff. Wierd...I'm gonna try 'reversing' my mouse buttons to see if that makes it easier for me. Also, the screens for all tools are limited to a maximum of 1024x768 at this time. If you are that size, it's 'full screen'. If you go bigger, it goes into window mode at 1024x768. I'll have to see how I like to work in it. Oh, as an aside to that, the text for the tool buttons seems blurry to me; I suspect it's my video settings (I have it set to AAx4 and AFx4 and not 'by program preferences').

Anyway, from the looks of it, it's getting more and more powerful with regards to rendering stuff come v2.0. That'll be nice. From a "make a game on your own" point of view...I'm not dissappointed. It's definitly looking 'easier' to get a base RPG-style game up and running that 3DGS...at the cost of customizability. Still, you can customize RC quite a bit..as long as you're not trying to do something other than MMORPG/RPG. Which is just fine, because it doesn't try to be 'versitile'.

The scripting seems fairly powerful. And as soon as v2 gets out, and then they get the Pro version going you will have full source code to the engine.

Well, off to spend a day playing around with import/export and learning the tools.